Dr Hussain al-Shahristani, a
Shi'ite Muslim nuclear scientist, has emerged as the
favorite to become Iraq's prime minister once
sovereignty is transferred on June 30, although some
reports have emerged saying - without elaboration - that
he does not want the job.
A spokesman for the
United Nations' special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said in a
statement that Shahristani "preferred and intended to
serve his country in other ways", but another US
official stressed that no final decision had yet been
made.
Brahimi is due to announce within days the
makeup of the caretaker government that is to take
power. Brahimi is helping identify who will serve as
president, prime minister, two vice presidents and 26
cabinet ministers, conscious that he needs to strike a
balance among Iraq's Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish
factions. Such a balance is considered vital to ensuring
the stability of an administration that will run Iraq
until elections due by next January 31.
Brahimi,
top US administrator in Iraq L Paul Bremer and White
House envoy Robert Blackwill met this week with some
members of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council
(IGC) to discuss candidates. Brahimi is "crunching
names" and "going flat out trying to reach consensus" on
the leadership, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
The post of prime minister, which will hold
executive powers, appears to have been earmarked for a
member of Iraq's Shi'ite majority. A Sunni will likely
be president, serving as the symbolic head of state.
Sunnis, despite being numerically weaker than Shi'ites,
have controlled the levers of power in Iraq for decades.
Brahimi has said he prefers "technocrats", as
opposed to traditional politicians, for the new
government, and Shahristani would fit the bill. He is
also close to Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah
Ali al-Sistani, a power broker whose consent would
likely be needed for the position.
Others who
have been mentioned as possible premiers include Mehdi
Hafedh, the current planning minister, and Adel
Abdel-Mahdi, a leading Shi'ite political figure. Adnan
Pachachi is most mentioned for the presidency. He is a
former foreign minister from pre-Saddam Hussein
governments and a respected Sunni member of the IGC. The
current rotating president of the IGC, Ghazi al-Yawer,
is also a possibility as president.
Kurdish
leader Jalal Talabani is also a possible candidate for a
top spot, though Kurdish parties have backed off calls
that they receive either the president's or prime
minister's spot. Kurds make up 20 percent of Iraq's
population of 26 million.
In an April 29
editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Shahristani
criticized the US handling of Iraq, saying the US
"failed to win the trust of the Iraqi people and has
allowed the country to slip into turmoil" by failing to
allow Iraqis to hold elections.
In February
2003, before the US invasion of Iraq, Shahristani said
he opposed a large-scale war that would kill civilians
and leave Iraq occupied. Instead, he called for a
"surgical" occupation-forces operation to remove Saddam
and "allow the Iraqi people to free themselves and
decide their destiny".
Shahristani was chief of
the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission until he was arrested
in 1979, after he says he refused to help Saddam build a
nuclear weapon. His arrest occurred at a time when the
regime was rounding up Shi'ites because of suspected
links to Iran. He escaped in 1991 after the US military
bombed the Abu Ghraib prison during the first Gulf War,
enabling him to flee to Jordan.
Before the war,
Shahristani was among the Iraqi exiles who insisted that
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. In February
2003, he told CBS's 60 Minutes that such weapons
may have been hidden in tunnels for a Baghdad subway
that never opened.
(Asia Times Online)
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